The Florida court of appeals ruled yesterday that investors and partners of businesses that sell medical Marijuana will be disclosed under the Florida public-law and would not be considered a trade secret. Partners and investors of Surterra Florida LLC and Redlands Nursery Inc. will be disclosed in the license applications and disclosed to the Florida Department of Health.
Panel rulings
Applications for Aplha Foliage and Redlands Nursery were submitted to the Department Of Health yesterday for grower licenses for medical marijuana. According to the dismissive ruling by the panel of judges, Surterra Florida was the contracting agent for the nurseries and therefore had to disclose public knowledge about its investors and partners for the Health Department to consider the applications for the nurseries.
The applications were written back in 2015 to grow, sell, and process medical marijuana under a law that allowed non-euphoric medical marijuana plants to be sold throughout the state. This law is also known as the Charlotte’s Web ruling where parents wanted to bring cannabis to the State Of Florida (where it was illegal) for their child who had epilepsy, and the court ruled in favor of allowing non-euphoric cannabis into Florida for patients who have epilepsy.
The ruling was revised in 2014 when the Health Department wanted to do a lottery of cannabis licenses for those who sent in their applications. The ruling about the Health Department lottery dismissed the lottery as a non-logical system to limit the number of licenses allowed in the state of Florida, and that it could deter getting patients qualified for cannabis and cannabis prescriptions if there were a limited number of licensed growers in Florida.
Case evaluation
In Leon County circuit court, lawyer Michael Barfield sued the city for not disclosing the records from the Health Department about the investors/partners in medical marijuana-related businesses. The Health Department declined to offer copies of the applications from parties who applied for cannabis licenses.
The case ruled that the Health Department must make investor and partner party information public knowledge and was sent to the Florida appeals court who also favored the ruling. The case was sent back to the Leon County circuit court based on specific information that was not disclosed after the ruling took place.
